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Compassionate Listening Alabama

• Authored by:
• Vickie Aldrich

Dear Friends: Tim and I will join the Compassionate Listening Alabama Journey in October, if the program gets enough people to sign up by August.

On Place (May 2022)

Soul-Work in Community

• Authored by:
• Stanford Searl

[This article was abridged from a far more detailed original, available at: https://westernfriend.org/media/soul-work-quaker-complative-reading]

On Normality (July 2022)

Webs

• Authored by:
• Ann Fuller

 

On Normality (July 2022)

Deep Hope in Optimystical Times (abridged)

• Authored by:
• Carl Magruder

For decades, I’ve been talking publicly about the gathering catastrophes of climate change and social injustice, and about the decline of the Society of Friends. Sounds pretty gloomy, I know. My day job as a palliative care chaplain at a large urban hospital entails sitting at the feet of those very powerful teachers named in Buddhist tradition: old age, sickness, and death.

On Cooperation (September 2022)

Beloved Community (abridged)

• Authored by:
• Marlene Coach-Eisenstein,
• Keith Runyan,
• Peni Hall

 

On Cooperation (September 2022)

On Cooperation

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

We are bags full of muscle and bone. And although we can see the leather of the bags, we can only guess at the contents, the memories and desires that propel any life, including our own.

On Cooperation (September 2022)

Botany on an Endangered Planet

• Authored by:
• Barbara Goodrich Phillips

I have spent my whole life learning about the natural world. I am a professional botanist whose career was focused for fifty-plus years on trying to use science to understand and “save” specific unusual components of our earth’s ecosystems. I have learned a lot about climate change over the many years since Al Gore published Earth in the Balance in 1992, which my life partner, Dr. Charles Avery, used as a textbook in his Northern Arizona University conservation classes.  However, in recent decades, I have become increasingly sad, frustrated, angry, and sometimes depressed that humans in general, and climate-change-deniers in particular, are threatening the health of our whole earth.

On Science (November 2022)

Listening During Meeting: An Apologia

• Authored by:
• Renie Wong Lindley

The ear listens, the mind translates. How many times during meeting for worship have I gotten it backwards! I listen with my mind. I ask a question or mull over a problem inside my head and hope God will hear me and answer back, inside me. Then if a worthy thought emerges, I stand to speak. Or if nothing, I’ll blame hearing the bus rumbling down the street, so loud and distracting.

On Science (November 2022)

O, Day!

• Authored by:
• Tyger Wright

 

On Science (November 2022)

Persistence

• Authored by:
• Tom Ewell

Naval Air Station Whidbey Island (NASWI) is a major military base on the island where I live. One of the noisiest planes in the world is stationed here, the EA-18G Growler. When deployed during bombing missions, the Growler works from an aircraft carrier deck and provides electronic jamming of enemy radar. While stationed on Whidbey, Growler pilots practice their maneuvers for landing on aircraft carriers. This practice involves multiple approaches to a small landing strip in central Whidbey, where the planes do touch-and-go exercises, sometimes for hours at a time, both night and day.

On Conflict (January 2023)